do not understand how your women ever get married at all."

She shook her head so violently that I shook mine too, and a gloom settled
round my heart. It seemed we were really in a very bad way. Did the
spirit of romance spread her rose wings only over aristocratic Germany?

I went to my room, bound a pink scarf about my hair, and took a volume of
Morike's lyrics into the garden. A great bush of purple lilac grew behind
the summer-house. There I sat down, finding a sad significance in the
delicate suggestion of half mourning. I began to write a poem myself.

"They sway and languish dreamily,
And we, close pressed, are kissing there."

It ended! "Close pressed" did not sound at all fascinating. Savoured of
wardrobes. Did my wild rose then already trail in the dust? I chewed a
leaf and hugged my knees. Then--magic moment--I heard voices from the
summer-house, the sister of the Baroness and the student from Bonn.

Second-hand was better than nothing; I pricked up my ears.

"What small hands you have," said the student from Bonn. "They are like
white lilies lying in the pool of your black dress." This certainly
sounded the real thing. Her high-born reply was what interested me.
Sympathetic murmur only.

"May I hold one?"

I heard two sighs--presumed they held--he had rifled those dark waters of a
noble blossom.